“How many of you?” Joao asked.
“There were fourteen of us in the truck,” Rhin said. She stared at Joao, studying him. His manner, his questions—everything consistent with innocence. She tried to reason from this assumption, but her mind bogged down. She wasn’t thinking clearly, and knew it. Ever since the first attack; there’d been something, a drug very likely, in the stings of the insects that had got through the caramuru. But her lab wasn’t equipped to determine what the drug was.
Joao rubbed the back of his neck where the insect stings were beginning to burn. He glanced around at his men, assessing their condition and equipment, counted four spray rifles, saw that the men carried spare charge cylinders on slings around their necks.
And there was his truck pod safe inside the perimeter. The spray they’d poured into it probably had played hob with the control circuits, though. But there still remained the big truck out in the savannah.
“We’d better try to fight our way out to the truck,” he said.
“Your truck?” Rhin asked. She looked out to the savannah. “I think it’s been too late for that since a few seconds after it landed, bandeirante.” She laughed, and the hysteria was close to the surface. “I think in a day or so there’ll be a few less traitors. You’re caught in your own trap.”
Joao whirled to stare at the Irmandade airtruck. It was beginning to tip crazily over onto its left side. “Padre!” he barked. “Tommy! Vince! Get…” He broke off as the truck sagged over even farther.
“It’s only fair to warn you,” Rhin said, “to stay away from the edge of the ditch unless you first spray the opposite side. They can shoot that acid stream at least fifteen meters… and as you can see”—she nodded toward the airtruck—“the acid eats metal and even plastic.”
“You’re insane,” Joao said. “Why didn’t you warn us immediately? We could’ve…”
“Warn you?”
Her blond companion said, “Dr. Kelly, perhaps we’d…”
“Be quiet, Hogar,” she said. She glared at the man. “Isn’t it time you looked in on Doctor Chen-Lhu?”
“Travis? Is he here?” Joao asked.
“He arrived yesterday with one companion, since deceased,” she said. “They were searching for us. Unluckily, they found us. Dr. Chen-Lhu probably will not live through this night.” She glared at her Nordic companion. “Hogar!”
“Yes, ma’am,” the man said. He shrugged, headed for the tents.
“We lost eight men to your playmates, bandeirante,” Rhin said. She looked at the small group of Irmandades. “Our lives are little enough to pay now for the extinction of eight of you… traitors!”
“You are insane,” Joao said, and he felt the beginnings of a crazy anger in himself. Chen-Lhu here… dying? That could wait. First there was work to do.
“Stop playing innocent, bandeirante,” Rhin said. “We’ve seen your companions out there. We’ve seen the new playmates you bred… and we understand that you were too greedy; your game has gotten out of hand.”
“You’ve not seen my Irmaos doing these things,” Joao said. He looked at Thome. “Tommy, keep an eye on these insane ones. Don’t permit them to interfere with us.” He lifted a sprayrifle and spare charges from one of his men, indicated the other three armed men. “You—come with me.”
“Jefe, what do you do?” Vierho asked.
“Salvage what we can from the truck,” Joao said.
Vierho sighed, took one of the sprayrifles and charges, motioned their owner to stay with Thome.
“Sure, go get yourselves killed,” Rhin said. “Don’t think we’ll interfere with that!”
Joao stopped himself from turning on her with a burst of outraged curses. His head ached with the anger and the need to suppress it. Presently he walked toward the ditch nearest the stranded airtruck, laid down a hard mist of foamal in the grass beyond, beckoned the others to follow and leaped the ditch.
Later, Joao did not like to think about that time in the savannah. They were out little more than twenty minutes before retreating to the island of tents. Joao and his three companions were acid burned, Vierho and Lon seriously. And they’d salvaged less than an eighth of the material in the truck—mostly food. The salvage did not include a transmitter.
The attack came from all sides, from creatures hidden in the tall grass. Foamal immobilized them temporarily. None of the sprayrifle poisons seemed to do more than slow the creatures. The attack stopped only when the men were safely back behind the ditch.
“It’s evident the devils went first for our communications equipment,” Vierho gasped. “How could they know?”
“I don’t want to guess,” Joao said. “Stand still while I treat those burns.” Vierho’s cheek and shoulder were badly splashed with acid, his clothing peeling away in smoking tatters.
Joao spread neutralizer salve over the area, turned to Lon. The man already was losing flesh off his back, but he stood there panting, waiting.
Rhin came up to help with the treatment and bandaging, but refused to speak, even to answering the simplest questions.
“Do you have any more of this salve?”
Silence.
“Have you taken any samples of the acids?”
Silence.
“How was Chen-Lhu injured?”
Silence.
Presently, Joao touched up three splash burns on his left arm, neutralized the acid and covered the injuries with flesh-tape. He gritted his teeth against the pain, stared at Rhin. “Where are these chigua specimens you killed?”
Silence.
“You are a blind, unprincipled megalomaniac,” Joao said, speaking in an even tone. “Don’t push me too far.”
Her face went pale, and the green eyes blazed, but her lips remained closed.
Joao’s arm throbbed, his head ached and he felt there was something vaguely wrong with every color he saw. The woman’s silence enraged him, but the rage was like something happening to another person. The odd feeling of detachment persisted even after he recognized it.
“You act like a woman who needs violence,” Joao said. “Would you like to be turned over to my men? They’re a little tired of you.”
He found the words strange even as he spoke them—as though he’d wanted to say something else and these words had forced themselves out.
Rhin’s face flamed. “You wouldn’t dare!” she grated.
“Ah, we can speak,” he said. “Don’t be melodramatic, though. I wouldn’t give you the pleasure.”
Joao shook his head; that wasn’t what he’d wanted to say at all.
Rhin glared at him. “You… insolent…”
Joao found himself producing a wolfish grin, saying, “Nothing you say will make me turn you over to my men.”
The silence that followed was filled with sense of drawing apart—farther, farther. Joao felt that Rhin actually was growing smaller. He grew aware of a distant roaring, wondered if it was a sound in his own ears.
“That roaring,” he said.
“Jefe?”
It was Vierho directly behind him.
“What is that roaring?” Joao asked.
“It’s the river, Jefe; a chasm.” Vierho pointed to a black rock escarpment rising distantly above the jungle. “When the wind is right we hear it. Jefe?”
“What is it?” Joao felt a surge of anger at Vierho. Why couldn’t the man speak right out?
“A word with you, Jefe.” Vierho drew him toward the blond Nordic who was standing outside one of the tents. The man’s face looked gray except around the acid burn on his cheek.